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SAMUHA PLAN is an integrated
rural development project working with over 9600 families
in 91 villages of Raichur and Koppal districts. Its disabilities,
HIV/AIDS and micro credit activities are reported under the
appropriate sectors. The project works in partnership with
PLAN India. The project is supported by child sponsorships
and currently covers 3960 children, 62% of whom are girls.
School-based
interventions are based on two main
components: Government School Supplementation (GSS) and Supplementary
Schools (SS). Under its GSS intervention, SAMPLAN facilitates
capacity building of teachers, provides Education Animators
to the villages, conducts community awareness on education,
supplements learning through teaching aids, encourages extra-curricular
activities and provides a forum for children to come together
and participate in various programmes in 80 of its project
villages.
Supplementary Schools focus on education, and
provide an alternative model for children in 18 villages.
They also operate within clearly defined educational frameworks,
which integrate continuous teacher training with weekly lesson
planning and a structured daily schedule.
Children are facilitated to operate within capability
groups. Each child is regularly assessed, as are the teachers.
The emphasis is on empowering the children with essential
life skills, not just reading, writing and basic arithmetic.
Highlights
2002
Special Child Consultations
:
As part of the special child consultations,
63 children from the Supplementary School intervention met
at the SAMPLAN Education Resource Centre in Markalwardoddi
to discuss various issues. Cocurricular activities like painting,
clay modeling, playing with building blocks etc were taught
to children.
Night Classes for 200
Dropouts :
Ten Supplementary Schools have started conducting
night classes for around 200 children who had dropped out
of school. In their villages. Children attending Chinnara
Angala, a goverment-run bridge programme for school dropouts,
were given school bags as an incentive to join regular school.
45 Youth Hired as Education
Animators :
To tackle the alarmingly high teacher-student
ratios in government schools, SAMUHA Plan initiated 45 local
youth to take on the role of Education Animators during the
academic year.
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Repairs for Govt. Schools,
Sup. Schools :
Through a special grant from the Finnish National
Office of PLAN, SAMUHA Plan carried out critical repairs of
19 government and Sup. Schools this year. Issued by the Block
Education Officer (BEO), Deodurg taluk. Children studying
in these Sup. Schools will be entitled to free text books,
uniforms and other benefits accorded to government schools.
KEY
LEARNINGS:
 Regular
monitoring of the schools is as much an essential component
of the programme as running them. The division of the schools
into three circles has enabled regular monitoring of the programme.
IN
THE PIPELINE...
...
Sup. School teachers will be encouraged to become facilitators
for all community development initiatives in their village.
| Before SAMUHA PLAN began working in our village, only
19 children had had any education… barely three or
four of these were girls. None of them continued after
Class 2. It has been only after the Supplementary Schools
started functioning here two years ago that all the children
have started attending school. ~ Balamma, traditional
birth attendant, Kurlewardoddi, Deodurg |
The Supplementary School in Kurlewardoddi began
nearly 18 months ago.
"The community here did not place a high value on schooling,
and the parents here were reluctant to send their children
to the primary school, which is nearly two miles away. When
I first came here as a teacher,” recalls Habeeb Pasha,
the Supplementary Teacher, “the people would not send
their children to my school either. It took quite some time
to convince each one of them individually to give me their
support.”
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